


Madness and Other Allergies

by Uniasus



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: 2 years after the movie, Alive!Tadashi, Darkpath Au, Gen, Graphic violence that's mainly off screen, Hiro has so many issues, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off of Runescratch's Darkpath AU.  In the two years since Tadashi's death San Fransoyko has gone to hell and it's pretty much Hiro's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madness and Other Allergies

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know Runescratch's Darkpath AU, shame on you. Actually, that's okay. But it's totally awesome. A quick overview can be found in her [first post here](http://runescratch.tumblr.com/post/106868230732/it-was-only-a-matter-of-time-before-i-did-a-dark), and here's a link to all of her stuff under [ the same tag.](http://runescratch.tumblr.com/tagged/darkpathau/page/3) In particular, this story entered my head thanks to this comic scene involving the fujitas.
> 
> Do you need to know the universe to understand this story? No. Plus, my take on it probably wouldn't match the 'canon' as Rune only gives it in bit and pieces and I had to totally make things up. I highly encourage you to read this and then go check out Rune on Tumblr.
> 
> Title comes from the song 'Madness and Other Allergies' by Opshop that float through my head every couple of months. 
> 
> And like my other BH6 fics, hovering your mouse over the underlined text in the story will show my in-text author notes.

Looking back, maybe it was too much hope that made him willing to overlook small discrepancies that got him into this situation. Or maybe it was those words whispered in his ears so shocking that it stayed his hands, words that inspired the hope that made him as scared as he was. 

It had been those words that made him switch his goal from killing Callaghan to capturing him and torturing the information out of him. A goal he couldn't complete on his own, a goal his friends refused to help him with so he created units to control them. Baymax restrained them one by one while Hiro forced the head bands onto them, forcing them to move as he decided so they could seek out Callaghan.

Hiro couldn't find him and so he hacked into database after database. He supposed he over extended himself, hacking into so many places simultaneously from the computers in the house and surviving on coffee. Somewhere, he didn't know where, he made a mistake and the authorities were one day outside the Lucky Cat Cafe. 

They cleared the cafe, stormed his room and the garage, guns aimed. Hiro had his motor controlled friends. He had his intellect. He had the modified mask he had taken from Callaghan and boxes of mircobots. Aunt Cass was already outside. He sent Baymax and Wasabi forward to take on the SWOT team and had Fred and Honey blow up the building. It was hot, even through the mircobot shield he called up around them to kept them safe.

He hadn't expected such a huge blast, damaging the buildings next door and starting a chain reaction in the cars out front. When the mircobots peeled open Hiro found himself looking at smoking wreckage and crisp bodies. He glanced at the car husks and the bodies near them; one was certainly Aunt Cass.

Gogo placed a hand on his shoulder and he turned away. Cass was dead, nothing he could do there, he had to focus on the living. Himself. His friends. Callaghan.

Hiro led them to the warehouse where he had first encountered Callaghan after the fire and declared it their hideout. And then since the police would do their best to stop him from completing his task he attacked them.

Every police station - gone. Most fire stations - gone. City hall, the UN office, the FBI building, every government building that had connection to law enforcement was destroyed. And then to prevent Callaghan from escaping he destroyed both bridges and bombed the highways and train tracks.

The city was declared a national disaster zone. The federal government sent over helicopters and planes. Hiro knocked them out of the sky.

He was not going to give Callaghan an opening to escape him.

The old professor had a lot to answer for. The fire at SFIT, stealing his microbots (though Hiro had stolen them back), those words whispered in his ear on Akuma Island that stayed Hiro's hand. Words that made his friends think he had shown mercy, but instead led to Aunt Cass dead and San Fransokyo isolated and living off of smuggled in supplies. Hiro was going to find him and get Callaghan to explain.

And he had to do it himself, since not even his friends had wanted to help on their own.

He ravaged parts of the city, looking for the old man. Destroyed homes, blocks, neighborhoods, but he didn't really care. It didn't matter that parents were no longer telling stories about the boogeyman to keep their kids inline, that the stories were about a short masked teen who could control the shadows. A teen that if you got close enough to you would lose your free will to him.

The city got scared. Hiro got frustrated. Hiro took his anger out on Yama who kept trying to stop his search, his control, from expanding.

Hiro saw...Tadashi.

It didn't matter that there was something off. His face wasn't quite what Hiro remembered, his hair a bit thinner and his hugs a bit colder. Callaghan had whispered in his ear that he had saved Tadashi, that his brother had survived the fire and was recovering in a bed and not potentially part of the ashes Hiro had cried over.

Tadashi was in front of him, alive. What need was there to find Callaghan anymore?

He stopped fighting for a little bit. Let the Red Cross drop food. Let Yama recover a few blocks. And then he took a closer look at Tadashi's medical chip and realized the man he had been calling brother for a few weeks was instead a stranger called Sano Izumi.

It was only his likeness to Tadashi that kept Hiro from killing him. But he destroyed that likeness before letting him go.

Hiro blocked the next six months of air supplies. He gained a block of territory from Yama. The small circle of privacy around the warehouse increased as the petty criminals started to clear out.

There was another Tadashi. Who spun a tale of leaving the city before Hiro had closed it and had worked so hard to get back in to get back to his little brother. This Tadashi was a little shorter than Hiro remembered, but maybe Hiro had just grown, a little thinner, but who wasn't in San Fransokyo, a little courser, but so was Hiro. This one had to be Tadashi!

Hiro didn't even have three days with his brother before Tadashi attacked him with a knife. Fred had filled him full of poison and Wasabi had stuck his blade in his chest. Gogo cradled him close and rushed him back to the warehouse where Baymax cleaned the wound. It had been lucky Hiro's eye hadn't been hit, but the scare running down his cheek would always stick out.

That was okay.

He got it now.

The Tadashi's were imposters, sent to stop him. He didn't know who sent them - Yama or the FBI - but when the third one came he commanded Baymax to kill him on sight.

Hiro was no stranger to violence, but he couldn't imagine killing someone with his brother's face and after seeing Wasabi's expression after killing the second imposter Hiro found he couldn't command his friends to do it either.

He took the one memento of his family, the golden heart locket, off from around his neck. Callaghan had been lying, he had said Tadashi was alive just to get Hiro to stop. That hadn't worked then, that hadn't worked now. There was no hope to stay Hiro's hand now. And it was too painful to be reminded of it everyday as the gold pressed into his collar.

The locket was attached to the shaft of Tadashi's katana - memories he wanted to put behind him but not let go of.

The next three 'Tadashis' who appeared all died quickly.

The fourth one, the sixth one Hiro had seen in two years, was different.

He hadn't been doing anything the others had done, walking through the city searching for him. No, this Tadashi had been browsing through a pile of junk in an alley way. He also had burns on his left arm.

The man was spacy, unfocused, and posing no threat. And obviously stupid for being out after midnight in an area Hiro was known to shadow stalk. The man rubbed his eyes in a manner that reminded Hiro of a Tadashi finishing an assignment three hours before it was due.

He was not focused on finding Hiro, he was just focused on living in this city Hiro now controlled, and Hiro pegged this man not as an impostor but just a regular person who happened to look like his brother. That happened, that was almost common based on the imposters that had been sent his way, but that didn't mean he had an ulterior motive.

Hiro let him be.

Which ended up to be a mistake.

Because when he next saw the man, he was no longer in dirty rags, but a tight fitting athletic top and baggy pants. He had gauntlets on his arm that smelled slightly of gunpowder. He did something no one else had done.

He had placed himself between Yama and Hiro when they were arguing about territory and growled "leave my brother alone."

Which had Hiro pushing him out of the way and Yama retreating, because the whole city knew at this point nothing angered Hiro more than someone posing as his brother. There was no one else in sight, Hiro had sent them away, but he quickly called Gogo up on his control panel and he suspected she would tell the others.

Hiro should have killed this man when he saw him two weeks ago, and now that he hadn't Hiro's life was again in danger. The imposter moved like water, but lacked Tadashi's straight forms of proper karate. They were the moves of someone trying to fight with a style different to what he had learned, focused on kicks, and strangely defensive.

Why had the imposter pulled his punches, pleaded for Hiro to stop, to just listen to him? Why had he begged "Hiro, please"?

And Hiro found himself unwilling to finish this man off, because that was Tadashi's face, sort of, and he could easily make one of the others do it instead. Gogo arrived, and Honey and Wasabi. Gogo placed herself in front of Hiro, protective and ready to attack, while Honey mixed chemicals and Wasabi moved in for close quarter fighting. Hiro had just pressed the button calling for Baymax when the impossible happened.

The imposter moved to box Wasabi's ear and the two of them tensed up as electricity traveled through their bodies. Hiro knew exactly what had happened. With a fluke hit, the headband had been damaged. Wasabi wasted no time in ripping it off his head, grabbing the imposter's hand, and screaming "run!".

Honey threw a bomb after them, but it missed.

Gogo tensed to chase them, but didn't.

Hiro watched them disappear around a corner and then fumed at himself for not doing anything. He took it out on the nearby wall, but then Gogo was there holding his fist back and saying that wouldn't do anyone good.

He let Baymax set his hand, he had broken it, and tried not to think about the hope and guilt in his chest that he hadn't felt in so long.

The feeling intensified the next time he was them, Wasabi calling the imposter "Tadashi" and the man in his arms shouting "I'll never give up on you!" causing Hiro and his friends to freeze.

But he had been caught up in that before, too much hope and wishing, too much believing in the words of a crazed, angry man - and certainly the imposter was one for throwing himself in danger and Wasabi was one because who knew what the effect of two years of body captivity would do to a person - to make the same mistake again.

That was not Tadashi.

That man had to be killed.

And so when Hiro came across the man again, once again when he was shadow stalking, he called Baymax. The man had yelled at him in a way that made his chest ache. It wasn't the over done happiness of reuniting the first imposter had shown, or the fake relief seeing his brother unharmed after hearing reports of the danger of San Fransokyo from the second, but rather the angry lecture Hiro had been on the receiving end of many times when Tadashi had tried to get him to stop bot fighting.

It was rough. It was stubborn. It was _I'm the big brother so you have to listen to me!_ It was wrong, it was right, but Hiro had started down this dark path years ago and knew this was just another attempt to drive him off of it. He was still looking for Callaghan, wanted to kill him good and proper for everything Hiro had been through because of him, and that was the only path Hiro could see laid at his feet. Everything else was a distraction. Everything else was false and had to be destroyed.

It didn't matter that this imposter felt the most like his brother, Hiro knew the truth. Tadashi was dead. Tadashi was gone. And the mementos of him and Aunt Cass Hiro had he kept out of sight because they hurt to look at.

This fake Tadashi needed to be gone.

Hiro didn't know what to feel when Baymax told him later that night the imposter had gotten away.

But he did know what he felt a week later, a feeling that bubbled up in his heart and exploded through his fingertips when the imposter intercepted a fight between Hiro and Yama's fujitas and took a bullet meant for Hiro.

The imposter was not working for Yama.

The imposter had sacrificed himself for Hiro.

And the Hiro had called the imposter Tadashi.

It had been sudden, wild, the protective rage and urge to protect that flowed through him. It was proud, it was loyal, it was Rule #4 _Hamada brothers always fight together._ Rule #1 _Hamada brothers always look out for each other._

Hiro slashed and jabbed at the fallen fujita, enjoying her screams, and when he looked over his shoulder he noticed the imposter was gone. So he turned his attention to the other people in the alley.

Two more fujita, looking pale at their dead sister. Fat Yama, who Hiro had defeated in a different battle more than two years ago, so why had this one taken so long?

He turned on them - cold rage, fierce determination, and angst. It was about time the dispute with Yama finished.

Three hours later, Hiro walked through the warehouse door with a nervous looking Fred behind him. He dripped blood from his fingers, his cape, the katana. Every time the microbots trailing him moved, they sprinkled droplets of blood on the ground.

Honey gasped and dropped the coffee pot. Baymax announced he was starting a scan. Gogo rushed over, put her hands on his shoulder, and directly asked "Are you okay?"

Hiro just smiled. "The city is mine."

Just because the city was his, didn't mean he had plans to rule it. He wanted the power to walk down the street, scattering those before him and getting what he wanted. And what he wanted was Callaghan.

He found him, living in the basement of Yama's mansion on the top of Nob Hill. Why he was there, what deal he had worked out with the crime lord, Hiro was determined to find out. Hiro wanted to know everything Callaghan did. His projects, his reasons, why he had started the fire and stole the microbots, the truth about Tadashi.

Hiro was going to drag out the answers slowly, just him and Callaghan, for days if he had to. Who cared if the city fell to pieces outside? If the lack of Yama encouraged rival gangs to spring up and Hiro's absence didn't keep declarations of turf silent? If his friends stood outside the door and winced and cringed at every scream Hiro elicited from Callaghan's lips? He wanted Callaghan to suffer and so he was going to.

And Hiro learned such wonderful things from it.

That Callaghan had once worked on a project called Silent Sparrow, teleportation between portals, and lost a daughter to the experiment. That he blamed Alister Krei, the tech millionaire who had fled the city at the first hint of disaster to abandon his employees and moved his headquarters to New Yokohama, for the accident. _(And didn't that mean Hiro could blame Krei for Tadashi's death? Because if Abigail hadn't died, he wouldn't have started the fire and Tadashi wouldn't have run into it. Surely Hiro understood that, that Krei was responsible for everything and so they should team up and make him pay.)_ That Callaghan had wanted to gain revenge for his dead daughter and to do that he needed a weapon and Hiro's micobots had been so perfect so he had stolen them. That Tadashi had been stupid for running into the building, Callaghan had seen him there. That Callaghan could not bare to see another young person full of potential die and so had wrapped Tadashi in a cocoon of mircobots and sent it hurtling away, only to realize later as he fled the fire the microbots had returned and he didn't know where Tadashi had been when the range called the bots back to him. That Callaghan held onto the last lie longer than Hiro had expected him too. Long enough that maybe, maybe, he was telling the truth.

But Yama had lied to his last breath too, saying he didn't know where Callaghan was and the man had been living in Yama's basement. Hiro remembered what he did to Yama in a back alley. He did worse to Callaghan.

And then the emptiness came. Hiro looked at the blood splattered concrete walls and then looked through them. San Fransokyo lay outside, dark and choked, cut off from the rest of the world. Somewhere, Hiro knew it was his fault. He missed the days at the cafe even when he was just moping around after Tadashi's death. He knew the city was starving and had taken to eating itself, that crime ran rampart and people lived in sewers.

Once upon a time, he might have felt guilt for what he had done. Felt a desire to fix the world, be a hero. But all he saw was a dark world that didn't interest him. Now that Callaghan's blood stained his boots he didn't know what to do. His mind itched for a bot fight, but Hiro knew it wouldn't do him any good. The thrill wouldn't be as is used to, not after conquering a city, and even if he could find a rare bot fight in this place of limited working parts no doubt his presence would scatter the fighters.

He pressed a hand to the wall, not minding the blood.

The world out there had no meaning for him. There was no Aunt Cass. No Tadashi. No friends either really since they had refused to help him at first and even now he had to control them. There was no challenge, no goal, now that Callaghan was dead. He didn't know what to do. _(Go after Krei?)_

He could start maybe with the first real sleep since the cafe blew up. Not just a cat nap between cups of Honey's coffee, but a real deep sleep where maybe he could dream this was a dream. That Callagahn's words were lies, that the fire never happened.

He felt so empty and tired.

Hiro ignored the looks his friends sent his way, he knew he had to look crazy. He could feel the smirk on his face underneath the mask, canines showing, because he had succeeded in this challenge even if it left him empty. He knew what Callaghan knew. He had killed Callaghan. His bloody clothes, red clumped hair, and thick boot prints told that story.

Gogo looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped when she saw Hiro's mask down. Good, he didn't want to talk. He just wanted to go home to the warehouse.

Except life wouldn't let him.

Because that imposter showed up again.

He hadn't said anything. Just stood there and stared at Hiro in his blood covered glory, Wasabi looking green behind him.

Hiro expected him to act a little like Tadashi, considering past experiences. Questions about Hiro's health, about what did he do, to stop this madness. But maybe the imposter realized there was no stopping it. The madness was here, the madness was complete, and San Fransokyo had become hell.

Hiro turned and walked away and when his friends didn't follow right away forced them to.

Just outside the warehouse, Baymax spoke.

"I managed to scan the imposter. That was Tadashi."

But that was impossible. Because Callaghan lied, Tadashi was dead, he was never coming back.

"Don't say such things Baymax. You're scanner is probably damaged again." There had been a few skirmishes getting to Yama's house.

"My readings indicate my scanner is fi-"

"Hush, Baymax. Your scanner is wrong."

Because of course it was. Callaghan lied. He always lied. Like Yama lied. Tadashi was dead, dead, dead, and after sleeping Hiro would make sure the imposter was dead too. A side goal of life.

Baymax had scanned the imposter, maybe he had gathered information about him Hiro could use, and so Hiro sent Baymax off to recharge after downloading his data to the screen.

Tadashi Hamada. Age 23. Suffering from limb stiffness due to burn scars and retrograde amnesia due to a head injury.

Fake fake fake. Because in this city, where was there a doctor's office with the working equipment to update embedded records? This had to have been done outside the city on some poor amnesia patient and they convinced a stranger his name was Tadashi Hamada. Never mind the birthday, the blood type, the old scars, the burns, the medical history and allergies. _(Never mind it was what he hoped for.)_ This was an imposter.

Tadashi was dead. This wasn't him. Tadashi was dead. He was gone. Tadashi was dead and Callaghan lied to Hiro in an effort to save himself that failed. Tadashi was dead. Tadashi was dead. Tadashi was dead and the world was empty.

Hiro spoke quietly to himself before falling asleep over the keyboard.

He slept, a real sleep, with dreams not of better times but of an old man's words and pieces being pulled out of the ocean. Callagahn's project, Silent Sparrow. That part was real, that part was interesting. Teleportation. A challenge, a direction, a way to leave this city and - and what he did not know but San Fransokyo was empty so he had to find a different place. A different focus, a different goal. _(Krei? Was he not at the center, starting the project. Had he not driven Callagahn, and thus Hiro, to madness? Maybe he should go after him.)_

Silent Sparrow was the key.

Hiro moved their base to Akuma Island.

It was there, the shiny gray he had noted before and the fragments of a charred one. Callaghan had never finished gathering the parts. Hiro did that, sending the microbots and Baymax down into the Bay Krei had used as a dump. One by one he brought the pieces up from the water and laid them out to dry, Honey and Gogo working on picking out the mud and mussels.

Sometimes he felt the eyes of the imposter on him, sitting on a motorcycle on a different pier or from the deck of a derelict boat. The imposter didn't do anything, just watched, and Hiro didn't bother sending Baymax out to kill him. This man might have been an imposter, but unlike the others hadn't tried to kill him. If he just watched, Hiro would let him live. Hiro had other things to focus on.

He didn't sleep, just put Silent Sparrow together piece by piece until he was looking at two separate portals recently turned on.

And that was when the imposter dropped from a ceiling vent.

"Hey, Hiro. How've you been?" He spoke low and was crouched, one hand towards Hiro as if the teen was a feral dog.

True to form, Hiro growled at him.

Who was this man, who dropped by uninvited into his home? To act like a brother and ask after his well being? To place himself between Hiro and Yama, Hiro and a bullet? To rekindle hope that only drove him deeper into madness?

Why were they still coming after him? Hadn't Hiro left the city alone the past month? Wasn't that what the world wanted? Him gone and San Fransokyo able to rebuild? Let it happen, Hiro didn't care, but he did care about this man staring at him with an altered medical chip acting like his brother.

Hiro saw red and it didn't mater that this man wore Tadashi's face. Hiro was sick of it all, all of it, Tadashi was gone and the thought stirred the emptiness inside him to uncover rage. He hated this, he wanted to be left alone, and if the imposter was going to not stop and his friends weren't responding to his summons then Hiro would have to kill the man himself.

The imposter had improved, his fighting style practiced and honed with kicks that bruised. But nothing more than that, as if he was holding back because he didn't want to hurt Hiro. Hiro didn't care about not hurting the imposter and with a _hiss!_ directed the microbots to attack. It was a short battle - Hiro had two years of constant combat behind him and an adaptable weapon that reacted to his every thought. The imposter only had gauntlets he refused to use to their full extent.

Hiro had just stabbed the man through the stomach to the floor below using the katana when Baymax wobbled in. Hiro turned to the robot, expecting some sort of apology for not being fast or an explanation for where was guard dog Fred or speedy Gogo. Why had Hiro's summons been ignored? But instead the robot blinked at the two portals and calmly said "I'm detecting signs of life."

But that had to be a lie. His scanners had to be malfunctioning again. Because Hiro had seen the videos, seen Abigail go in and not come out. It had been years, there was no way she was alive. Plus, Callaghan had said it was his daughters death that started this.

Callaghan lied about many things. Hiro wanted to prove them all wrong, _(prove that teleportation was possible, prove that Tadashi was dead to stop this pain)_ he wanted to escape and Hiro felt that old tingle of adrenaline and curiosity that made him feel alive start in his toes.

This was better than a bot fight.

The two portals were both open. They were stable. There was nothing against going in and looking.

Hiro walked forward, Baymax at his heels, and the world exploded into color.

It hurt his eyes because San Fransokyo was dark and grey. The world was dark and grey, with red lights in his room and Gogo's bright paint covered in grime and patterned with the base material coming through. But the portal was bright, cotton candy pink and highlighter blue, buy-me-now orange and Caribbean teal. It hurt his eyes at first, all the colors, but he found himself quickly adjusting.

This...this was beautiful. There was the other portal ahead of him, a wide vortex of white light that proved Callaghan wrong. This was possible. This was real. This was the space between space, the moments between time. This was discovery and uncharted territories, groundbreaking potential, and the emptiness slowly fading away.

This was a purpose, studying this space, this technology. It pushed all other thoughts, the potential 'what's nexts' from his mind. This was something helpful and thrilling, the cutting edge he had always been searching for in bot fights and chased in stealing Yama's control. This was something complex waiting to be understood, something his mind couldn't grasp quickly, it was a challenge, it was life, it was hope, it was a new beginning.

"Hiro. Hiro. Hiro." Baymax was calling him and Hiro snapped his attention from the slowly churning clouds to the robot next to him.

Baymax seemed out of place, his rough armor and deep colors contrasting with the light and fluffy background, and Hiro's mind flashed to the changes that had over come San Fransokyo. It had been light and fluffy too once. Now it was ruined.

Maybe he should stay away from this place, least he ruin it too.

"Hiro, it is cold here. I am worried that you already have developed hypothermia and if we stay much longer you would freeze to death. I suggest we retrieve the woman quickly."

Right. A woman.

The thought sent unease through his body. He had rebuilt Silent Sparrow to prove Callaghan wrong. To escape San Francisco. Callaghan was a liar, like Yama was a liar. This was stable, safe. He knew because he had already sent mircobots ahead of himself through the other portal and they had returned via the one behind him.

Callaghan was a liar. That meant there should have been no woman in the space between portals. And certainly no woman in a small craft with a Krei Tech logo on either side that hummed with a weak energy, just enough to sustain the needed conditions for hypersleep and display bio stats. And certainly no woman whose helmet HIro could make out through brushed aside frost said 'Callaghan'.

Professor Callaghan lied. Teleportation was real, it wasn't beyond the grasp of the world. It hadn't even been Krei's fault it had gone wrong based on the notes Hiro had found. But if Callaghan said nothing but lies, why was there a woman who could only be Abigail?

"Hiro, I suggest we start leaving. Your body temperature is dangerously low."

But Hiro didn't care about that. Because if Callaghan had said some truths, if Abigail was in a pod in this beautiful space, if his reasons for starting the fire and stealing his microbots was this, if the night of the fire - if the only lies he had actually told were about teleportaion and Abigail's death were based off of lack of knowledge instead of manipulation like Yama had been fond of using - if all that was true it meant Callaghan hadn't been lying about saving Tadashi.

Hiro felt his brother's name sit heavy in his mouth and then drop into his stomach. He mouthed the word, but air had escaped him. It was too cold here, too cold, because reality and hope were crashing down around him.

He called the mircobots to him, formed a thick road so his feet could find traction and allow him to run and then he cursed himself because it if there was any time to use the jet pack on his back now was the time. But his science mind stopped him, who knew how flammable the stuff around him was so Hiro just ran faster and faster.

Because if Callaghan hadn't lied about Tadashi, if he had been telling the truth, if he had saved his brother, and this imposter man who just watched him with sad eyes and broke Hiro to pieces wasn't actually an imposter, then _Hiro had just pinned his brother to the floor with a katana and left him to die._

He ran fast. He didn't know how long he had been between the portals. Didn't know if time ran differently here than out there. All he knew was that it was potentially Tadashi out there bleeding to death, that was his brother, dying by Hiro's own hands, and Hiro desperately wanted to fix it.

Who cared about Callaghan's daughter, she could stay in that pod for a thousand years. Hiro commanded Baymax to hurry, hurry, because maybe Tadashi wasn't dead yet, maybe Baymax could help him.

When Hiro burst through the portal and into the workshop, it was as if no time had passed. Except it had, because hadn't Tadashi's hands been wrapped around the sword when Hiro left? They were now lying palm up next to him, deep cuts in the palms that drained blood to join the pool caused by the wound in his chest.

"No," Hiro gasped and he pushed his body father. It didn't matter that his limbs were prickling from the pain of being exposed to sudden heat and having the numb nerves reactivate, that his legs felts slow, his lungfuls of air burned like swallowing a firecracker, and he could see that the tips of his fingers were blue. What mattered was Tadashi lying there, still. Eyes closed.

Hiro crashed to his knees next to his brother and he didn't know if Tadashi's skin felt cold or if his fingers weren't still properly registering heat after the coldness of the portal space. He placed a finger to his brother's throat, found a place around the sword to put his ear.

Nothing.

"Tadashi. Tadashi, no. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't know, I didn't believe. Tadashi, Tadashi. Please, please."

Hiro's body was too cold to cry, his words breathy little whimpers. He curled around his brother's chest, thought of the time he had brought Tadashi cold presses when he ran a fever, or climbing into his lap on the couch after a hard day of school. Of Aunt Cass covered in flour and Mochi hiding under tables and waiting for crumbs like a dog. If he could have more than memories, more than the golden locket, he wanted it.

"Tadashi. Tadashi, please."

He waited. Surely Tadashi was just taking shallow breaths, the sword would stop him from taking proper ones, Hiro's fingers still couldn't feel a faint pulse.

Nothing.

His head wasn't lifting with a raising chest either.

Hiro knew before Baymax waddled up and calmly intoned "Tadashi is dead" but hearing those words made Hiro shatter in a way nothing had before.

Not his brother's first death. Not his friends saying no. Not after Aunt Cass's death. Not after leaning about the imposters. Not after having one of them almost take his eye. Not the small feelings of guilt and despair and regret he sometimes felt looking around him and pushed down. Not finally giving up his brother for dead.

Because this time here was the proof in front of him. Here was Tadashi's own body, slowly cooling down, with Tadashi's katana forced through his chest with Hiro's locket attached to the end and Hiro's fingerprints on the hilt.

San Fransokyo had gone to hell awhile ago, spiraling down and down until it was no longer recognizable. Hiro had done that, pushing the city before him as he too slowly fell apart. But that was done. He had hit the floor with the force of five Gs and shattered on impact; done, spent, broken with only himself to blame because he hadn't been able to let go of his teenage angst and anger.

He screamed his brother's name, his frozen lips and throat cracking and bleeding as his forced his portal cold body to do something it wasn't ready to yet.

Hiro screamed his own death, because this was his fault, his fault, everything was his fault and it was just too much, too much, he had shattered into ceramic pieces on the floor but it was still too much he was driving over them with a tank and the ceramic was ground into sand.

It was gone. It was all gone. Cass. Hope. Tadashi. Himself.

When he stopped screaming, when he stood up, some small part of him whispered in the back of his head that the emptiness he had felt after killing Callaghan hadn't been true emptiness, this was. But then the voice was gone and Hiro didn't care about anything.

Who cared about the cold body at his feet? Who cared about the four figures looking horrified in the doorway, dressed in green, pink, yellow and blue with no trace of a headband? Who cared about the large red robot by his side, saying a name he had no right to answer to and giving a diagnosis that wasn't positive? Who cared about the stiffness in his limbs, the blue tinge to his fingers, the blood soothing his throat and dripping down his lips?

Who cared about anything at all in this dark, hopeless world?

Who cared about anything, anywhere?

This city was broken, but might recover. Given time. Time he didn't care about. Because he was empty, empty and cold and in pulverized pieces on the floor.

He just wanted it all to stop.

"Hiro, your body temperature is still low. Shall I warm you up?"

His chest was a gaping hole as he turned to the portal. It was white and bright, but beyond it was the only positive thing he had seen in two years. He knew without a doubt it wouldn't make him happy, make the emptiness go away. But maybe it could make him forget about it for a minute or two.

He strode towards the closest portal. It was blackened by fire and he could tell the infrastructure couldn't take much more. Ah, such things happened.

"Hiro, I would advise against going into the portal. The structure looks unstable and it is too cold for a human to stay on the other side for more than a few minutes."

He ignored him and kept walking forward, the microbots behind him moving stiffly and in sharp corners.

"Hiro! Hiro, wait!"

He thought it was Honey's shout but it was Gogo who sped past him to block his path.

Her hair was dirty, her disks were spiked, her cheeks hollow and her skin paler than any Korean should be. He knew, distantly, emptily, that this was not how she imagined herself to be when she first agreed to the suit. That she was in such shape because of him. But her control band was gone, knocked off by Tadashi or Wasabi he didn't know, and she was still standing before him with an arm stretched out as if to place it on his shoulder.

She didn't.

Instead, she reached for his face and he let her push up the kabuki mask.

Maybe, yesterday, he would have had emotions about this. About Gogo being free, about seeing what he had turned his friends into, about them still holding concern for him despite everything.

But that was yesterday and today, right now, all he can think to do is drown his emptiness in cotton candy pink and Caribbean teal.

"Hi-Hiro. I, I'm sorry. I wanted things to be different, we all did, I -"

She trailed off, her eyes moving from his to the floor to his again.

"This is tough, I get that, but Hiro if there was ever a time to woman up it's now."

Woman up. Rise to the occasion. Quit complaining. Do something.

Hadn't he been doing that the past two years? And hadn't it ended up like this?

He shoved her aside, she grabbed his wrist and he knocked her aside with jittery microbots before walking through the portal. The bots started breaking apart the pieces immediately once he gave them instructions. He looked around at the fractal clouds of gas, heard the still silence.

The sight didn't feel the same, not at all like it had twenty minutes ago. But he felt coldness slip into his fingers and up his arms to his chest, his body equalizing with the air around him and the emptiness inside. He rotated so he stared upwards, hiding the view of the white portals slowly closing.

It was so still. Peaceful. Empty but good.

He was lying on his back, next to Aunt Cass and Tadashi on the roof, saying nothing as they looked at stars.

He kept his eyes open until he froze.

**Author's Note:**

> Next week is apparently Tomadashi week? Don't really ship them hard core, but I needed happy breaks while writing this and so my entries will be on [Tumblr.](uniasus.tumblr.com) They'll only migrate here after the event, and even that's up in the air as to when, so follow me if you want them sooner! At this point, they're all totally in the same universe as From the Ashes of Grief.


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